English Dub Review: Management of a Novice Alchemist “Let’s Defeat a Salamander!”

Overview:

Sarasa has a hunch the salamander slithering around the volcano is to blame for recent events, but there’s a golden opportunity lurking in this precarious situation!

Our Take:

Up until this point this anime has had a cute animation style. Nothing too crazy, I wouldn’t rate it bad or anything but it also wouldn’t get any high marks. Then this episode comes along and destroys my preconceived notions of how I think this series will go. You can tell that this is the episode where ENGI studios spent their entire budget because when Sarasa fights the Salamander it goes hard. It was one of the better fight scenes I have seen outside of the heavy hitters. It does leave me a little disappointed because if the studio had it in them this whole time why couldn’t they have done more? If I had to guess it’s because this series isn’t exactly known for its fight scenes and this was their first time to spread their wings.

There’s one episode left and I think after this Sarasa has solved Iris’s debt problem. The salamander has a lot of useful parts but my question is how are they going to get it off the mountain? Now that Sarasa used all of her magical power she can’t move until it replenishes, meaning they have to get Sarasa AND the salamander parts down. This was probably the best episode and I look forward to seeing how this concludes.